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DETERRENCE Send This Review to a Friend
Apart from being an awful film, "Deterrence" has a despicable point of view. Meant to be a thriller, it is a saber-rattling justification of using nuclear weapons and playing poker with the fate of the world. Written and directed by Rod Lurie, the film smacks of the worst excesses of the past cold war, only the crisis is updated to a future hot-button issue in 2008, this time in a new face-off with Iraq.
Kevin Pollak plays an arrogant, twerp of a U.S. president who is up for election after having risen to the office from vice president upon the death of his predecessor. The setting is a diner in a Colorado town in the midst of a snowstorm. The diner becomes the war room as the president takes civilization to the brink. He knows something we don't, but all the twists and turns in the world can't erase the basic attitude of this film: If you have to destroy millions of civilians, so what?
Little in the film is convincing, despite the best efforts of a cast that also includes Timothy Hutton as the chief of staff. The dialogue and the incidents, as well as the plot manipulations, seem contrived, and besides, Pollak doesn't come across as the least bit presidential. A Paramount Classics release.
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